


Sick Day

by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat)



Series: Two Can Play At That Game [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Identities, Alternate Universe - College/University, Bittersweet Ending, Chameleon Arch (Doctor Who), Chicken Soup, Doctor Who Series 12 Spoilers, Doctor Who Spoilers, Does It Count As Roleplay If It's a Split Personality?, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Feral Bastards Being Soft, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Jenny Smith/Harry Jones - Timeline A, Memory Alteration, Other, Romantic Fluff, Sick Character, Sickfic, Spoilers for Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Telepathic Bond, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24026146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiNerdsItsCat
Summary: (Timeline A)While laid up with the Time Lord equivalent of the flu, the Doctor accidentally dials the wrong number... telepathically.--------------------------------------------------------‘You wanted to talk to Harry Jones badly enough that you reached halfway across the universe,’the Master said.“I’m delirious.”‘You missed him.’“And what if I did?” the Doctor demanded irritably. “Jenny and Harry lived together for six months. That’s a lot of old habits to shake off.”‘Do you… do you want to talk to him? I could put him on the line, so to speak.’--------------------------------------------------------Meanwhile, Jenny Smith and Harry Jones reminisce about the first time they were ever nice to one another: when Harry got the flu while at St Luke's University.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: Two Can Play At That Game [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733089
Comments: 30
Kudos: 105





	Sick Day

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the "Timeline A" version of the ending to _Two Can Play At That Game:_ where the Doctor and the Master go back to being Time Lords/Best Enemies.

At this point (insofar as she could still tell time), she had called out for Yaz three times, Ryan four times, Graham twice, River eight times, Martha three times, Rose twice, Jo three times, Susan and Romana once each, and Nikola Tesla once for some reason.

Not that any of this calling had an effect: the Doctor was alone in her TARDIS, half-delirious with fever, and utterly miserable.

She had dropped the fam off once it became clear that she wasn’t going to be able to ignore her symptoms for much longer. Whatever she had probably wasn’t a disease that humans could catch, but viruses mutated in unexpected ways and she didn’t want to take the risk.

“It’s basically the Time Lord version of the flu,” she’d explained to them once the TARDIS arrived in Sheffield. “Nasty but usually non-lethal—”

“It’s the ‘usually’ part that’s got me concerned,” Ryan noted.

She tried to brush off their concerns: “Worst that’ll happen is I regenerate.”

“That’s still not reassuring!” Yaz protested.

“I’ll be _fine,”_ the Doctor insisted. “I’ll bundle up, make myself a cuppa, and ride it out. I’ll be back in a few days.”

“Are you sure?” Yaz asked. “We could get you something if you—”

“No need! Stop fussing! See you in a bit!” She shooed them all out of the TARDIS and set coordinates for somewhere very isolated where she wouldn’t be bothered.

Hopefully.

Though within a handful of hours, an entire Dalek fleet could have come through the door and she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

The Doctor was wearing two jumpers, a very long scarf, and three blankets—and she was _still_ shivering. She ached all over in a way that was only slightly less agonizing than electrocution. Every time she moved her head, she really wished that she hadn’t.

During her more coherent moments, she tried to reassure herself that she wasn’t in any danger. As she told the others before they left, Time Lords got sick too and there wasn’t anything for her to worry about.

(Although, given what she had recently learned about her origins, her body felt like brand new terrain all over again. Who knew what things her body was capable of doing—or not doing?)

It was during one of her less coherent moments that she called out another name: _Harry._

No, not Harry Sullivan—although he probably would have been of some use seeing as he was a medical doctor—but a different one. 

The Harry that she called for no longer existed. Not dead, but worse: vanished into fragments of memory and hidden away inside the mind of someone who looked exactly like him but was most definitely _not_ him.

Harry Jones was only a dream.

But since the Doctor was still delirious, she had lost track of what things were real and what things were dreams.

So she reached out, calling for him, her mind drifting across the universe, and then—

_Contact._

_‘What are you doing?’_ The Master sounded more bewildered than cross.

“Wrong number,” she murmured. 

_‘You sound half-dead.’_

“Sorry to disappoint,” she replied with a weary laugh. “I’m only twenty percent dead at the moment.”

_‘Well, I could arrange to move those numbers around a bit. Where are you?’_

The Doctor snorted, though the sudden motion made her head ache. “I’m not telling you that. Are you still in that cabin?”

_‘I might be. I might also be in the process of subjugating a world. Care to find out?’_

“You’re in luck: I’m taking a sick day. No heroics from me today.”

_‘I would love to know how sick you’d have to be to not muster up the strength to save a planet or two.’_

“Did the chameleon circuit on your TARDIS break, by the way?” She was having some trouble staying on a single topic.

She could feel him laugh inside her mind. _‘Turns out there’s a reason why it was so easy to steal.’_

“And here I thought that you had a fancy modern one.”

_‘Compared to yours, every TARDIS is a fancy modern one.’_

She couldn’t help sighing wistfully. “At least it got stuck as something cozy. I liked that it was cozy.”

_‘I was thinking of installing a fireplace.’_

“Ooo, those are nice.” The thought of a fire made the Doctor shiver a little more violently.

 _‘I felt that,’_ the Master said. He sounded a little uneasy. _‘You really_ _are_ _sick, aren’t you?’_

“I will neither confirm nor… nor confirm that. That statement. The confirming circuit broke.”

She experienced the very weird sensation of him trying to push further into her mind. “Oi!” she complained. “Hands off!”

_‘I’m trying to make sure that you aren’t actually on the verge of death.’_

“What, afraid you’ll miss it?”

He didn’t reply for so long that the Doctor wondered if they had broken the connection without her realising it.

But eventually he did respond, hesitantly. _‘I know who you were really calling for.’_

She groaned. “I didn’t do that on purpose.”

_‘You wanted to talk to him badly enough that you reached halfway across the universe.’_

“I’m delirious.”

_‘You missed him.’_

“And what if I did?” she demanded irritably. “Jenny and Harry lived together for six months. That’s a lot of old habits to shake off.”

_‘You don’t ask for help very often.’_

“Like I said, it was an old habit. _Her_ habit.” 

_‘Do you…’_ He sounded hesitant again and it was beginning to worry her. She didn’t like it when the Master was uncertain—it made his actions even harder to predict than usual.

“Do I what?”

_‘Do you want to talk to him? I could put him on the line, so to speak.’_

“You mean lie to me.” But a small stab of hope still moved through her at the thought of it.

 _‘I don’t know what I mean,’_ he admitted. _‘He’s in there somewhere. It’s probably easier to access those memories when we’re speaking mind to mind.’_

“Like he’s a split personality?”

 _‘It’s not so cut and dried as that. He hasn’t receded from my mind the way that other Chameleon Arch personas have in the past.’_ He laughed softly. _‘Hell, he feels more real than some of my former regenerations. Has that happened to you as well?’_

The Doctor wanted to protest but her thoughts were still so fuzzy that the longing inside of her was growing difficult to suppress. 

Especially because it was a longing that wasn’t entirely her own. “Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes it’s like she’s lurking just underneath my skin, waiting for her turn.”

 _‘So what have we got to lose?’_ he asked.

She almost replied with “ _ourselves.”_ This was dangerous, indulging in what was probably nothing more than a shared delusion, but she also knew that if she broke the connection she would have to go back to being miserable.

Why not take the offer of a diversion, then?

“All right,” the Doctor said. “Go ahead.”

This time, when he moved further into her mind, she didn’t resist. If it felt like anything, it was like the two of them were trying to get comfortable on a very small sofa together: a bit awkward, a few elbows colliding and shoulders bumping, eventually settling down into something… well, something _cozy._

_‘Jenny?’_

She exhaled and let herself sink down into those memories. 

After all, who was anyone but a bunch of memories?

“Harry,” she whispered as a smile spread across her face.

* * *

Their thoughts and voices resolved themselves into a familiar space. 

Jenny looked around as much as she could without lifting her head from Harry’s shoulder. “Is this our flat in Leeds?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” Harry agreed. They were so close together that she could feel his voice in his chest as much as she could hear it with her ears. 

“We never got a sofa, though.”

“I think this was stolen from one of _their_ memories, not ours.” He inspected it. “Not bad. Very plush.”

Jenny sniffed. She mostly just smelled the nice familiar odor of Harry’s shampoo, but underneath that was a faint whiff of… “Smells a bit like engine oil,” she said.

“Must be the Doctor’s, then,” he said with a laugh. The arm around her waist pulled her a little closer. “How are you feeling?”

“Still sick,” she sighed. “Achy, tired, and a bit cold.”

“I suppose I could find a quilt somewhere,” Harry offered.

“No, you’re probably warmer than any quilt we could swipe from old memories.”

“Well, good, I didn’t want to stand up anyway.”

She snuggled a little closer. “You missed me.”

“Desperately. Also, I knew that the second I got up, you’d take over the whole sofa and I’d never be able to sit back down.”

“Oi!” she protested. “You’re not allowed to be rude to me while I’m sick.”

“Your _body_ is sick. Your mind, which is where we are—more or less—is not.”

“It’s still a bit fuzzy,” Jenny countered. 

“Yes, but it’s not as though you’re about to vomit on my shoes.”

“All this time spent apart and _you_ want to talk about vomit.”

He repositioned himself so that they could talk face to face. “Come on, stop wallowing in self-pity and help me figure this out. They were somehow able to let us out so that we could talk.”

“Not necessarily: this might just be them pretending really _really_ well.”

“Wasn’t that what they were doing to begin with, in a way?”

“True,” she conceded, silently vowing to find a really good counter-argument once her head felt a little clearer. 

“Whether they like it or not, _we_ think we’re real. Let _them_ have an existential crisis for a change.”

“It would serve them right,” she laughed.

Jenny looked around the flat again. Their surroundings were surprisingly detailed: other than the sofa, everything was where it would have been on a typical evening—a chaotic mess, primarily—both in appearances and through all her other senses. She and Harry were wearing their usual clothes: in her case, it included a long-sleeved shirt underneath the Ramones t-shirt she had stolen from the Doctor’s wardrobe on the TARDIS.

She remembered living here with Harry, and remembered their disastrous trip to Gallifrey when they discovered their former identities, and then remembered their final moments before pulling the lever to send them back… but then she _kept_ remembering: the Doctor and the Master returning to their senses, their agonising conversation before parting ways once again, and then resuming their separate lives before this unexpected reunion.

She didn’t remember it in the same way that she remembered her life as Jenny Smith, but instead remembered it the way that one would remember a movie or television show: vividly, but from a distance.

“It’s _weird,_ though.” Jenny sat up a little more as something occurred to her. “This isn’t the recollection of a conversation that we had in the past—this is a brand new conversation. We might be memories, but we’re not _just_ memories.”

She thought back to right before they changed back into the two bickering Time Lords, and remembered the words she had spoken: _“What is anyone except a bunch of memories? That’s what_ _they_ _are, and that’s what_ _we_ _are. So if they remember us, then we’re not really gone.”_

And they turned out to be right, because here she was and here _he_ was, and even though Jenny could still feel the faint rhythm of four heartbeats if she concentrated, she and Harry hadn’t been annihilated. 

Not just that: they were _together._

“I thought you said that they were just pretending,” Harry teased her.

She indulged in a little moping. “Shush, I’m sick. I’m allowed to agree with you without admitting that you might have been right.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. 

“Psychology is more your area of expertise than mine. Do you think they were right about this being a split personality situation?”

He scratched at his beard for a moment, then shook his head. “Probably not. Dissociative identity disorders tend to include significant memory gaps. Although… they’re not human. Who knows how mental illnesses manifest in Time Lords?”

The fog in Jenny’s mind began to clear a little more. “There was something he said right before this… something about how you felt more real to him than some of his previous regenerations.”

“So Time Lords must have _some_ psychological structure in place for when they regenerate and get what is essentially a brand new personality—”

“—and we’re an exception,” Jenny finished. She frowned for a moment while considering what they had discussed so far. “Maybe because there wasn’t a physical change as well?”

Harry looked at her a little incredulously. “Aside from the fact that we gained an _entire additional organ_ when we changed back?”

She fought back the urge to roll her eyes at him. “Okay, _yes,_ there was a full cellular rewrite, but we still look exactly the same. Same face, same accents, same tastes—”

“In food or clothes?” Harry asked with a mocking grin. “Because it’s true that you both have none to speak of—”

“Oi!” She gently elbowed him in the ribs. He gave her a nudge in return and, as it usually did, the whole thing devolved into a tickle fight.

Which gradually turned into something much nicer.

“I missed this,” Jenny whispered when their lips finally parted. 

“Kissing me?”

“Being touched. She doesn’t… the Doctor doesn’t do that.” She sighed. “I suppose I didn’t either until you came along.”

Their arms were already wrapped around one another, but Harry held her a little closer and buried his face in her hair. 

“Neither does he,” he said. The feeling of his breath on her skin was a bit ticklish. “I mean, it serves him right, seeing as his typical solution for touch starvation is wringing someone’s neck—”

“—typically hers.”

“It’s a nice neck,” he murmured, giving said area a little nuzzle.

“Though there was a long period at St Luke’s when we wanted to throttle each other as well.”

“Back before we met the Doctor.” Harry managed to sound both wistful and embarrassed at the same time.

Jenny felt much the same. Something about those days now felt so ridiculous, when every emotion seemed to be heightened to the point of absurdity.

And the ways that those emotions manifested were occasionally very strange.

“Do you remember the time you got the flu, back in Bristol?” she asked him.

“You mean the first time we were ever nice to each other?”

Jenny wrinkled her nose. “I’m not sure I’d call that _‘nice,’”_ she said, “but I suppose it was the first time that we weren’t actively trying to sabotage one another.”

“Partially because I was a bit indisposed at the time,” Harry pointed out.

“Yes, but you were still extremely difficult during the whole thing.”

“And you were nice to me anyway.”

Jenny smiled. “I suppose that I was, wasn’t I?”

* * *

_I should have counted the steps first._

_Five, six, eight… wait, hang on, I missed one._

The number seven wasn’t the only thing that he missed: Harry’s foot slipped and he nearly tumbled down the stairs. Through what was probably some kind of miracle, his hand managed to grab the railing before he could either break his neck or at least injure his pride in front of dozens of students at St Luke’s.

Dimly, in the part of his brain that was offering commentary but not much in the way of helpful advice, he wondered if any of those students would have helped him if he _had_ fallen. 

_It’s not as if I have any friends._

Well, _that_ was a bit depressing.

 _Less self pity, more solutions,_ he ordered himself, resuming his dizzy struggle to reach the second floor of the Main Building before the Doctor’s lecture started.

That was the only reason why he had dragged himself to campus anyway: because Harry was damned if he was going to let himself miss a lecture by the only person at this entire bloody university who might be more intelligent than he was.

And, furthermore, he certainly wasn’t going to put himself in a situation where Jenny Smith knew something that he didn’t. He would get himself into that lecture hall if it killed him.

By the time he reached the second floor, though, he began to worry that the killing part might not be hyperbole.

He hadn’t slept well the night before, thanks to Jenny doing something to his flat’s electricity that made his appliances turn off and on at random, which he had only managed to stop by unplugging everything. Therefore, when his (thankfully battery-powered) alarm went off in the morning, he chalked up the discomfort he was feeling to ordinary fatigue and added an extra scoop of instant coffee to his mug.

The caffeine hadn’t helped: by the time he reached campus, his head had gone completely fuzzy and he was sweating profusely.

And now, the instant coffee was beginning to make his stomach churn in a way that made him rush for the lavatory, where he was promptly sick.

Kneeling by the toilet, he couldn’t help emitting a groan of misery, which turned into a cough that made his ribs ache.

_Time to get up, you’re going to miss the lecture. Just stand, wash out your mouth, and then you can sit down when you get to the hall. Easy. Simple. Now move._

But his knees refused to cooperate with his brilliant plan, no matter how many times he berated himself. “Come on, pull yourself together, you’re not going to let some pesky… pesky _thingy_ keep you down.”

Someone had apparently entered the lavatory without him noticing, because he now heard footsteps approaching the stall he was occupying. 

Harry groaned again as he realised that he recognized those disgusting boots.

“You all right, Jones?” Jenny Smith asked, pushing the stall door open to get a look at him. She winced. “You look half-dead.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” he mumbled. “I’m only twenty percent dead at the moment.”

“Hmm… your voice sounds worse than usual, you've obviously got a high fever, you’re shivering—”

“I am not shivering!” Harry protested, trying to ignore the way that his teeth seemed to want to clench up as he spoke.

On the other hand, that wasn’t too dissimilar to his usual reaction to Jenny’s presence.

“—the vomiting isn’t a typical symptom,” she continued, “but I expect that’s more due to the liquid gravel that you consider to be ‘coffee’ than any kind of gastrointestinal illness. If I were to offer a hypothesis, I’d say that you had the flu. Have you had a nasopharyngeal swab taken yet?”

Harry stared up at her with what he hoped was a withering glare, but the fact that his eyes were having trouble focusing might have ruined the effect somewhat.

“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Jenny said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You can’t stay here.”

“I’ll go home after the lecture,” he said. “I came all this way.”

She scoffed. “You’re a threat to public health. Who knows how many surfaces you’ve contaminated since you left your flat?”

“I just need to sit for a bit—” but he was suddenly overtaken with a fit of coughing.

Somehow, Jenny’s scorn intensified. “Well, since you obviously can’t be trusted to do the correct, smart, or responsible thing, I’ll have to do it for you. Wait here.”

But rather than leaving immediately, she went to the sink and started washing her hands.

“What were you doing in here anyway?” Harry asked.

“What do you mean?” she replied.

“This is the men’s lavatory.”

“So?”

“So you’re a _girl.”_

“Debatable,” she said. “This will take a few minutes, so I recommend passing out until I get back.”

He didn’t get a chance to object before she left, so Harry was left muttering to himself and cursing the fact that his body couldn’t cooperate long enough to do anything useful.

He had no idea how much time passed between Jenny’s departure and her return, but no one else entered until she pushed open the door to the lavatory and then his stall, carrying an armful of bright yellow material.

“Is that a body bag?” he drawled sarcastically.

“Not quite. It’s a hazmat suit.” For her part, Jenny was wearing latex gloves and the kind of respirator that one typically used around toxic fumes.

With an internal groan, Harry realised what she was planning. “I’m not getting in that thing,” he objected. _“You_ wear it.”

She shook her head. “It’s far safer to have you wear it than me. Your viral load is probably quite high at the moment; easier to keep you sealed away than to shield everyone around you. Now stick your legs out.”

“I’m going to cough on you _intentionally,”_ he threatened.

“I figured you would,” she said cheerfully. “Hence the respirator.”

He kicked as best he could while Jenny wrestled his lower half into the suit, but he was still too weakened to put up much of a fight. She then hoisted him to his feet and helped him over to the sink. “Wash your hands,” she ordered, turning on the taps.

Seeing as she was the one keeping him upright, it wasn’t as if there was anywhere he could go. It was, however, the most resentful episode of handwashing he had ever done in his life.

Jenny turned off the taps and then another bout of wrestling ensued as she forced Harry’s arms into the sleeves of the hazmat suit, pulled the mask over his head, and then sealed him in. She then changed her gloves and wiped down the sink and stall door with disinfectant.

“I hate you so much,” he grumbled as she dragged him out of the lavatory and down the hall to the stairs. Bracing him under one arm as they went down the stairs, she proceeded to disinfect the railings as they went.

“We’re going to have to retrace your steps,” she said. “Did you stop anywhere on the way to campus this morning?”

The only reply he was able to manage was a wordless grunt of frustration.

She sighed. “Walking it is, then. I’ll try to wipe down the most likely spots, but it’s going to be an unpleasant trip.”

As they made their way across the campus of St Luke’s, Harry dimly noticed that they were attracting quite a number of nervous stares, which wasn’t helped by Jenny’s cheerful reassurances of “Don’t worry, we’ve got it contained!”

“They’re going to think I have Ebola,” he complained.

“Influenza kills between 300,000 and 650,000 people every year,” Jenny noted. “Hopefully the misapprehension means that they’ll take a few more precautions: illnesses spread through places like universities at a slightly higher rate than normal since everyone’s in such close proximity to one another.”

“I don’t need the epidemiology lesson.” Still, his mind wouldn’t let go of the thought of hundreds of thousands of people dying, screaming, turning to ash under his feet as cities burned to the ground…

Jenny’s voice pulled Harry out of his delirium. “We’re here. Brace yourself for the stairs.”

 _Why did I choose a third floor flat?_ Harry wondered to himself as they struggled up the stairs together.

The torment finally ended—well, not _ended_ precisely, but at least lessened in severity. Harry slumped against the wall next to the door of his flat and began to fumble around for his keys.

They were in his pocket—he had at least remembered that much—but since the pocket was inside the hazmat suit he was wearing, it was going to be a little tricky to access. 

He fumbled for the zipper, but Jenny smacked him in the arm before he could do anything. “You’re not taking that thing off until we’re inside,” she said.

“Well, that’s going to be a little difficult if we can’t unlock the door,” he snapped.

“Not to worry,” she said, kneeling down and prodding at the lock with a few bits of metal. “I can get this open.”

“You’re _picking the lock?”_

“Of course I am. How else do you think I was able to steal those books back from you?”

“I cannot _believe_ that you would—”

“And here we are,” she exclaimed, opening the door. Behind the respirator mask, she made a noise of disgust as she helped him inside where, at last, Harry was able to escape the prison of the hazmat suit and collapse onto his bed.

“You know, I’m not all that surprised you got sick,” Jenny remarked. “This place is a petri dish of germs.”

“Good news for you then,” Harry mumbled, “because you’re on your way out.”

“You’re not rid of me yet,” she countered. “I’ll be back soon.”

“I’m locking the door!” he yelled after her.

“Good luck with that!” she called over her shoulder before she shut the door behind her.

Now alone and lying down on something that wasn't a floor, Harry's thoughts drifted back to feverish dreams of cities in flames and the dark whispers of sinister voices…

_Pulverised… burned… nuked—when did you last go home?—got you… finally—the dead outnumber the living—the drumming… the drumming… the call to war—life is wasted on the living—the power of tooth and claw—the black secret at the heart of your paradise—you will obey me… you will obey me… I am the—_

“Jones, have you got a tin opener?” Jenny’s voice startled him back to coherence.

Well, _almost_ coherence: Harry’s response was more mumble than words. “Wzzt?”

Her sigh of exasperation was audible from the kitchen. “Never mind, I’ve got one on me.”

After a few more sounds from the kitchen, Jenny appeared in his bedroom carrying a thermos. “I hope you’re not vegetarian, because this—” She froze and her eyes widened just a fraction.

It was only after Harry pushed himself up onto his elbows that he realised that, at some point after he got into bed, he had removed all of his clothes.

He made a desperate grab for the blanket on the floor and covered himself as hastily as he could. “Er… not vegetarian,” he said, doing his best not to look directly at her and failing utterly.

“Good.” Since Jenny was still wearing the respirator, he couldn’t tell what her expression was, but he did notice a slight flush of pink on her cheeks. “I forgot to ask before I went to the store, so it’s a relief to not have to go back.” She indicated the thermos. “This was the closest thing to a bowl I could find. Good news: that means you won’t need a spoon.” She shoved it into his hands and quickly left the room.

For a moment, he thought that she had fled the flat entirely, until she returned with a few more items. 

While she was gone, Harry had taken a sniff of the contents of the thermos.

“You got me chicken soup,” he said, bewildered.

“I left another two tins on what I assume is your kitchen counter,” Jenny said. She handed him a small bottle of acetaminophen and a larger bottle of ginger ale. 

Harry smirked at the beverage. “You do know it’s a myth that ginger ale helps with upset stomachs, don’t you?”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “I was in a hurry at SPAR and panicked. Remember to drink some water as well.”

Her actions hadn’t gotten any more confusing. “You brought me soup and _ginger ale.”_

 _“And_ acetaminophen,” she added. “You owe me twelve pounds, by the way.”

“You brought me soup, _and_ ginger ale, _and_ drugs, _and_ sealed me up in a hazmat suit and dragged my nearly-unconscious body home.” He smirked again. “If I didn’t know better, Smith, I’d start to suspect that you liked me.”

Jenny looked briefly flustered and, for a moment, Harry did too. “If you had died,” she said, obviously trying to make a joke, “everyone would have assumed that I poisoned you. And I don’t really have time to be a person of interest in your presumed murder.”

“Especially since I hid a note in my belongings accusing you of foul play,” he shot back. “It says that—” He paused as something finally occurred to him. “You missed the Doctor’s lecture to take care of me.”

Now she looked _really_ uncomfortable. “Yes, well, it’s only a lecture,” she said awkwardly. “I’d better not see you on campus until your fever’s gone down. And _you’re_ responsible for returning the hazmat suit.”

She turned to go—

“Jenny,” he said, realising a moment too late that he had called her by her given name for the first time ever.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Yes?”

“Thank you for the soup,” he said.

Jenny blushed under the mask again. “Feel better soon, Harry.”

A few seconds later, he heard the door close after her.

* * *

“I stole your shampoo and bottle opener on my way out,” Jenny reminded him.

Harry shrugged. “It was probably the closest thing to emptying the trash I’d ever experienced in that particular flat.”

“True, you were a genuine health hazard back then.”

He made an indignant sound. “You’re one to talk, you know. For all of my messes, _I_ at least never set off the fire alarms.”

“I was doing experiments on that alien excrement we found in 1814!”

“You _kept a sample of that?”_

“Of course I did! I had to find out if it was true that it burned a thousand times hotter than coal—”

“And did it?”

“Well of course not, that’s absurd,” she scoffed, “but it did get up to 7,000 Kelvin before it set off the alarms. And destroyed the table. And a bit of the floor. Fortunately I tested such a small amount that it burned itself out rather quickly.”

Harry made a wordless groan of exasperation. “And you did all this _in your flat.”_

“I took precautions! Besides, it wasn’t as though I had a lab like I did in Leeds. I worked with what I had.”

“I have never been more grateful for the existence of that bloody lab than I am right now.” He sighed. “At least we got better at tidying up after we moved in together. In retrospect, that was practically a miracle.”

“I like that,” Jenny said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “I like that we changed like that… how we tried to be better people for each other.”

“And just like that—” Harry snapped his fingers, “—we changed back into _them.”_

She laughed softly.

“What?” he asked.

“You think they didn’t change?” Jenny asked. “Of course they did—and not just the ones who look like us. I think we threw off things for Missy and _our_ Doctor so much that it’s a wonder their future selves still exist.”

Harry was silent for a moment. “What if it didn’t make a difference? What if Missy still turned on him and they both regenerated, and then the Master still went to Gallifrey and destroyed it?”

“We’ll probably never know: I think it’s a different timeline now.” She smiled and laced their fingers together. “I like to think that they’re off travelling together—the Doctor still has to guard her, you know, so why not have some fun while they’re at it?”

Harry smiled as well. “Missy’s already saved the world once, thanks to us. There might be hope for her yet. But you’re right—”

“You never say that I’m right.”

“I’m being nice to you because you’re sick,” he teased her. “As I was saying, you’re right: I don’t think we’ll ever know what happened to them.”

“That’s the trouble with time machines,” Jenny mused. “You can’t fix your own past.”

“The only thing we can do is torment our future selves with all of our pesky not-vanishing.”

Jenny was reminded of the Doctor's words: _Sometimes it’s like she’s lurking just underneath my skin, waiting for her turn…_

It didn’t sound quite as much like someone else’s voice as Jenny had hoped it would. She sighed. “Not vanishing, but I think we _are_ starting to fade back into their memories.”

Unexpectedly, Harry gave her a wicked grin. “Then let’s really mess with them before we go.” He stood, helping her up after him. “Come on, I’m taking you to bed.”

“Did you finally take pity on me?” she teased him.

“Tell the truth,” he said. “How sick do you actually feel right now?”

Jenny mirrored his grin. “Not very.”

“Then let’s see what else we can get up to in there.”

* * *

At some point, Harry and Jenny faded away, returning to whatever distant memories they normally lived in. What remained, however, was that feeling of warmth, of safety, of… well, of intimacy.

It felt like they were still curled up together, only _“they”_ no longer meant _“Jenny and Harry.”_

Still, the Doctor couldn’t bring herself to pull away. 

She knew that the wisest course of action would be to break the connection as quickly as possible. This whole situation was not just dangerous, it was almost a betrayal: if there was one person who deserved the worst of her fury, it was the Master.

But as it so often did these days, her longing overrode her anger. It had been so long since she had let anyone get this close.

She didn’t like to think about it, especially in light of all of the things that he had done both before and afterwards, but when they established that telepathic link while in Paris, it had felt… strangely comfortable. 

She also didn’t like to think about the flash of relief she had sensed from him when they first made contact. 

He destroyed their home. Now they were the closest thing to home either of them had left.

He was the one who ended up speaking first. _‘Did we just…?’_

She could feel herself blushing. It was harder to hide it while their minds were linked like this, especially with the memories of what they had been doing just now lingering in her thoughts—and she was still uncertain which _“they”_ had even done it. 

Feeling a little unsteady, she agreed: “Yes. We did.”

A fresh wave of longing swept through her—through them both, probably—while she did her best to keep her breathing under control.

Some treacherous part of her mind wondered what would happen if she were to show up at the door to his TARDIS. 

“Still don’t have a sofa, do you?” she asked.

_‘No.’_

“You should get one. Especially if you end up putting in a fireplace.”

_‘I was joking about the fireplace.’_

“So? Do it anyway.” She made a sound of amusement. “Although the fact that I suggested it means that you won’t do it just to be contrary.”

 _‘Well, now you’ve put me into a bit of a bind,’_ he said irritably. _“If I take your suggestion, I’ll have to admit that it was a good idea, but if I don’t, then I’ll have to admit that you were right about my contrariness.’_

The Doctor couldn’t help smirking. “I know you so well.”

_‘You know me too well.’_

She flinched, but still didn’t pull away.

They knew one another far too well, and it was only going to get worse the longer this went on.

_‘Doctor.’_

“Yes?”

_‘You said no the last time, but I’m going to ask again anyway: would you come back with me? Be them again for keeps?’_

She knew that he was going to ask her eventually, but it still hurt to hear, and even more painful to reply: “I told you that I can’t.”

The Master’s obvious disappointment was hidden behind a sneer of disgust. _‘Your little saviour of the universe shtick. You can’t save everyone.’_

“So you would rather that I save you instead?”

_‘It would admittedly be a nice bonus… but maybe you should start with saving yourself.’_

“Stop pretending to care about me,” she snapped.

 _‘I do care about you. Always have.’_ Before she could protest, he continued: _‘But caring isn’t necessarily a positive thing. You can’t hate without caring.”_

“And do you hate me?”

_‘I suppose you could say that I hate the Doctor… but you’ve always been more than just the Doctor.’_

Weariness enveloped her like a weighted blanket. “Wasn’t finding out that I hadn’t always been the Doctor the thing that drove you to destroy Gallifrey?”

What followed was a tense silence, during which the Doctor was reminded of how miserable her body was.

As she tried to figure out what to say next, however, the Master spoke up. _‘He’s driving me mad, by the way.’_

“Who?”

 _‘Harry. I keep making plans and then when I’m halfway through I just… stop. I stand there and think “What am I doing?” and then I realise th_ _at it’s_ _him_ _thinking those things. It’s really putting a cramp in my recreational villainy.’_

There was a fluttering in her chest: hope was a terrible thing sometimes. “You should listen to him,” she said, trying to hold that feeling back.

_‘How else am I supposed to occupy myself, then?’_

“You’ll have to find an actual hobby,” she joked. “Ever tried gymnastics?”

_‘Waste of effort. You’re well aware of how flexible this particular body is.’_

The Doctor didn’t think it was possible to laugh, groan, and blush all at the same time.

 _‘Ooo, I felt_ _that_ _. Not a lot of eye candy on the TARDIS, then?’_

“Shut up.”

_‘Feeling a little frustrated?’_

“It certainly sounds like _you_ are.” As unexpectedly flustered as she was by the teasing, it was a relief to be back on more familiar ground.

Which was, of course, when he drove the knife of his sincerity in a little deeper. _‘Come back with me,’_ he urged. _‘Please.’_

Her hearts ached almost as much as they did the first time he asked. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

_‘I’ll keep asking, you know. Maybe one day you’ll say yes.’_

The Doctor knew she could probably convince him that she would never agree to it… but at the moment she couldn’t even convince _herself_ of that fact. “Just… just promise me something, all right?”

_‘My promises don’t mean much. You know that.’_

“Don’t ever try to threaten or blackmail me into saying yes.”

His reply came faster than she expected. _‘I would never do that.’_

She couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “I’m surprised. Threats and blackmail are usually your preferred method of communication.”

_‘Not about this. I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to.’_

“Why not?”

_‘He would never do that to her.’_

That confession hit her like a kick in the gut. “I can’t tell where they end and we begin,” she admitted, “not anymore.”

She didn’t want to believe anything that he told her or rely on anything that he promised her, but six months of unconditional trust were still lurking under her skin, begging to be set loose. “I’m sitting here _wanting_ you so badly but I don’t know whether it’s even me who’s doing the wanting.”

_‘Then why not just let her win?’_

“Because, in spite of everything, I want to keep on living.”

_‘No, you don’t.’_

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

And _there_ was the other complication: how she was so tired after losing Bill on the Mondasian ship (not to mention losing Missy) that she almost decided not to regenerate. At the end of all her previous lives (the ones that she could remember, at any rate), she had been scared or angry at the inevitability of changing, of cutting loose a fragment of identity, of dying so that she could be reborn… except for the most recent one, when she very nearly let it all end because she was _tired._

“Do you think it’s possible to live too long?” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

 _‘I used to think that it wasn’t,’_ the Master admitted, _‘at least where I was concerned. Now… I don’t know.’_

“There used to be stories… books, songs, poems, back on Gallifrey, about one’s final regeneration. Remember? Letting go and finding peace when facing the very end. I couldn’t understand how anyone could find that _peaceful.”_

To her relief, he didn’t bring up the discovery that she might be a rather glaring exception to that particular rule. _‘To be fair, compared to most Time Lords, it must have looked like we were trying to kill ourselves as quickly as possible. No one else burned through their cycles the way that we did.’_

“Because we were almost suicidally reckless,” she agreed with a laugh.

_‘We still are. But we did far more with that time than any of them ever did.’_

Her mood soured at the reminder of why he had used the past tense. “Why did you have to kill them?”

_‘I told you why. I’ve told you again and again. It’s not a good reason, it’s not remotely satisfying, but it’s all that I’ve got.’_

“You keep telling me but I still don’t understand. You had so many other reasons to hate them. Why was _this_ the thing that pushed you over the edge?”

His laughter was a bleak sound. _‘When did mass murder ever have a reasonable explanation?’_ After a moment’s pause, he asked another question: _‘Do you want me to invent a better reason? One that would let you pretend that it all made sense?’_

There wasn’t much else to do, and she didn’t know what else to say, so she sighed. “All right. Give it a shot.”

_‘Did you ever go back to Gallifrey? After the Cybermen wiped themselves out and turned the planet to dust?’_

Even though he couldn’t see it, the Doctor nodded grimly. “Yes.”

_‘The Matrix survived. It wasn’t organic. Did you take a look?’_

“Yes,” she whispered, her hearts aching again. The story of her origins: a child abandoned near a rift between dimensions, the genetic source of Gallifrey’s ability to regenerate, then years spent with its shadowy intervention agency… before her memory was wiped for the thousandth time and she was sent to an insignificant farm in the drylands to begin what she thought was her first life, not realising that everything she thought she knew was a lie.

_‘I saw all of it too—at least everything that could be recovered from the Matrix. I saw every experiment that Tecteun performed, every time you were forced to regenerate, every lie they ever told you… and it made me angry.’_

“How is this different from your original explanation?”

_‘I was angry because they hurt you.’_

She rolled her eyes. “What, jealous that you couldn’t help them do it?”

_‘Furious that I couldn’t do anything to stop them.’_

Even knowing that it was a lie didn’t keep it from being incredibly painful to hear.

The Doctor tried to imagine what it would be like to be in some kind of horrible situation and have the Master show up, not to contribute to her agony, but to help her bear it.

She missed her best friend from Gallifrey and she missed Harry Jones and she missed the people she had been when she was with both of them.

“If I…” she began unsteadily. “If I ever reach that point… where I’m ready to bring it to a close… you’ll be the first to know.”

_‘Do you promise?’_

“You know that my promises don’t mean much either, but… I promise. I’ll come find you and we’ll go back together.”

_‘Sounds a bit like a suicide pact, doesn’t it?’_

“It is, in a way.”

_‘Or one of those childhood promises: “If neither of us finds anyone by our third regeneration, then we’ll get married.”’_

“It’s _definitely_ one of those.”

 _‘Did we ever make one of those?’_ he asked.

“No… just the one about going to see every star together.”

 _‘Do you know,’_ he mused, _‘I think we might be really bad at this sort of thing.’_

The Doctor didn’t even bother to ask which _“sort of thing”_ he was referring to. She couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t qualify.

 _‘You should sleep,’_ the Master said suddenly, and broke the connection without another word.

To her surprise, she didn’t feel quite as miserable as she felt before.

The Doctor then experienced another surprise when she drifted into unconsciousness almost immediately afterwards.

* * *

She woke up to the sound of her phone chiming.

It was a text message from a number that she knew achingly well, back when she thought he was just a really interesting MI6 analyst named O.

 _‘Go look outside’_ was all that it said.

The Doctor groaned as she stumbled to her feet. She didn’t feel quite as feverish, but the act of standing up was still a little unpleasant. 

At this point, it probably wasn’t worth asking how he had figured out where her TARDIS was parked—if there was one thing that the Master did very well, it was Turn Up And Ruin Her Day.

With a sigh, she pulled her sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. Whatever surprise he had waiting for her, she just hoped that it didn’t involve much running.

When she opened the door, however, nothing seemed to have changed. It was still the same anonymous rock quarry that she had arrived in hours (or possibly days) before. A quick scan with the screwdriver didn't turn up anything suspicious either.

But when she looked down at her feet, there _was_ something unexpected: a plain paper bag which, she discovered when she picked it up, contained a thermos.

Hoping that he hadn’t sent her some kind of pipe bomb, she unscrewed the top of the thermos and took a hesitant sniff. 

Her eyes widened. 

_Has he lost his mind?_

The Doctor closed the door of the TARDIS and got out her phone again.

“This is soup,” she blurted out when he answered her call.

“So you aren’t dead after all,” the Master replied drily.

“You brought me soup.” She took another whiff of the thermos’s contents. “You brought me _chicken soup.”_

“Might be chicken, might be something else,” he remarked. “Have fun figuring it out.”

Sitting back down, she put the phone on speaker mode and examined the other contents of the paper bag. “Are these water biscuits?”

He pretended to sound surprised. “Are they?”

She frowned. “There’s no spoon.”

The Master made a small offended noise. “Such ingratitude. I brought you _soup_ and this is the thanks I get?”

The Doctor took a sip from the thermos. “Ooo, this is rather good.”

“Since I assume that’s the closest thing to a thank you I’m going to get out of you: you’re welcome.”

“Where did you even get this?” she asked.

“How do you know I didn’t make it myself?”

“Because we both know that you’re a rubbish cook.”

“Says the person who can’t even make iced tea properly,” he shot back.

Now it was her turn to sound offended. “Any tea can be iced tea if you ignore it long enough!”

“Not really helping your case, love.”

She felt herself blushing at the term of endearment. “So where did you get the soup?” she asked again.

“Why do you want to know?”

“In case I want more later. I can’t always rely on you for delivery.”

“I…” The Master sounded unexpectedly hesitant.

“What?” she demanded.

His reply was mumbled almost too quietly for her to hear: “I went back to Leeds.”

“You did _what?”_ She suddenly understood how he had gotten the soup. “Did Mrs Khamari make this?”

His embarrassed silence was all the answer she needed. Her jaw dropped in disbelief. “You went back to Leeds and asked our neighbour to make me _chicken soup?”_

“You do _not_ want to know how much food she sent _me_ back with,” he said wearily.

“What did you tell her?”

“Well, once I was able to get a word in edgewise after she and Mr Khamari lectured me for vanishing without a trace for over eight months—”

She couldn’t help laughing. “You got lectured in _stereo.”_

“I’ve had executions that were more pleasant than that,” the Master groaned.

“So what did you tell them?”

“I told them that we got married and moved to Australia.”

“I’m sure they were thrilled about that.”

“Well, they were thrilled about the wedding part, but they were both rather livid that we didn’t have it in Leeds. I may have implied that you had an unexpected Brexit-related citizenship issue that required a hasty departure from the country.”

“And they didn’t find it the least bit _odd_ that you were asking for soup for someone who was apparently _in Australia?”_

He made a thoughtful sound. “Surprisingly, they seemed to have taken that bit in stride. But it might have just been because they were too busy being upset about the whole vanishing thing.”

She smiled. “I’m surprised you made it out of there alive, much less with soup.”

He sighed. “I had to promise to call them every Sunday from now on.”

The Doctor cackled. “Good luck arranging _that_ while travelling through time.”

“I also promised that _you_ would call them.”

“Are you serious?” she said incredulously.

“Do you think I’d joke about something like that? I’ve been saddled with filial obligations!”

“‘Filial _obligations’?”_ She continued laughing. “They’re not even your real parents—they were just neighbours who decided to unofficially adopt you because you apparently needed looking after despite being a fully grown adult—”

“And they’re _terrifying—”_

“Oh, come off it, Harry, you know you love the attention—” The rest of the words froze in her throat.

The Doctor took several deep breaths while trying to remind herself that she had two hearts.

“This is the only way we can talk to one another now, isn’t it?” she said quietly. 

The Master’s reply was just as quiet. “By pretending to be them.”

“We can’t keep doing this.”

“If it’s the only way for us to have an honest conversation,” he said, “I’ll take it.”

“Ironic, isn’t it, that we can only be truthful with one another when we lie?”

“Sounds like our kind of irony.” Something in his voice cracked. “This is killing me. I hate feeling this way.”

She felt her fingers tighten around the thermos. “You’re the only person I can talk to about what happened… and the absolute last person who I _should_ be talking to about it.”

“I should be angry with you. I should be _furious_ with you for making me feel this way.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“I _know,”_ the Master said, cutting off her protest with a growl, “and that’s why I can’t find that anger, even though I typically blame you for everything. I just… ache.”

Even though he couldn’t see it, she nodded. 

She missed the people that he used to be. She missed the people that she used to be.

She missed the places that they used to call home and the plans that they made while they were there.

To her surprise, though, she didn’t miss the time when she could ignore the pain that it caused.

It was agony but, for what felt like the first time, she had someone to bear it with her.

Perhaps next time it wouldn’t hurt quite as much.

“Thank you for the soup, Harry,” she said softly, and ended the call.

Even after she had finished every drop of soup, the Doctor held the empty thermos in her hands, inhaling the memories of a faraway home.


End file.
